


All he has left is now.

by imzadinot



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Angst, Based on a Tumblr Post, Character Death, Draco doesn't give a shit, Drarry, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, Nihilism, Non-Canon Relationship, Non-Canonical Character Death, Redemption, apologetic Draco Malfoy, copious usage of the word fuck, i have no idea how to tag this, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-22 23:59:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11391105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imzadinot/pseuds/imzadinot
Summary: All he has left is now. These last few months. That’s all there is. That’s all anybody has. And- If that’s all he’s got, maybe…what if he didn’t waste them? What if he got to be himself? What if- What if he told everything else to fuck off, just for a while, so he can go back to being himself, whoever he is away from this fucked up fight for nothing?





	All he has left is now.

**Author's Note:**

> This was based on a Tumblr post that I don't know how to link to but you've probably seen it before. I saw it, though, and wrote this instead of writing for my other works.
> 
> I have no claim to the idea or the characters, I'm simply borrowing them to play house.

He won’t survive this war. 

It’s not a realisation that hits him out of nowhere, but one that merely builds up in the back of his mind until it’s a truth he can’t deny anymore. 

This war will kill him, and there’s nothing he can do about it. His father is drowning in it, his mother keeps fighting against the tides but can never win and only he is left. It all falls down to him, Draco Malfoy, the distinguished and soon-to-be-deceased heir to the Malfoy family’s dynasty of dark secrets. 

His arm hurts. Constantly. It shouldn’t, logically. Not when the Dark Mark is inactive, when he can pull his sleeves down and pretend it isn’t there, but it hurts. It hurts because it is the signature that sealed his fate and there is nothing he can do to be free from it ever. 

He’s seen what happens to those who ignore the mark. Or try to disfigure it. Heard their screams, from the parts of the mansion he doesn’t like to go to. 

There’s no way that he’ll survive. 

And it’s ridiculous. 

He’s a boy, fighting in a war his parents trapped him in, for someone who…for something he doesn’t believe in. Against someone he doesn’t want to hurt. 

He’s just a boy. He’s still at school. He should still have two years there. Two years of lessons and boredom and sneering down his nose at Harry Potter. And he should be allowed to enjoy that. But no. The war, his parents, even his own body, has him trapped and he’s not going to live through it. 

But- He won’t survive. All he has left is now. These last few months. That’s all there is. That’s all anybody has. And- If that’s all he’s got, maybe…what if he didn’t waste them? What if he got to be himself? What if- What if he told everything else to fuck off, just for a while, so he can go back to being himself, whoever he is away from this fucked up fight for nothing?

He ends up shouting that one evening, when everything just becomes too much. He stands up, staring at the pathetic man who has watched over him for the last six years of his life and is just as much to blame for everything as his parents are, and he shouts. And Merlin and Morgana, it feels good. 

Draco realises just how good it feels once he’s walked away, and it encourages him to keep going. He gets all the way to his room, locking the door and his roommates out, that’s all they are, really. Roommates. Not his friends. Not really. They just parrot the same bullshit he used to believe in. They don’t bother him, anyway. He locks himself away in his room and emerges a few hours later feeling ridiculously happy and more like himself than he ever has. 

Pansy Parkinson stares at him. At least, she stares at his hair. His bright-fucking-blue hair. It’s ridiculous and he loves it. He’s wanted to try it ever since he saw some girl with purple hair in Diagon Alley, and why not now?

His hair is a good start, and it spurs him on. In the back of his head, fighting for space with the neon sign warning of his fate, is a sort of list. He supposes it’s a list of things he’s always wanted to do. Or maybe it’s a list of how to atone for all the shit he’s pulled when he was still wandering around with his eyes half shut. 

Granger is next. Apologising to her. It’s new to him, realising how pointless everything is, and obsessing over blood status is one of the things he regrets. Especially when he looks back at how he treated Hermione Granger. She slapped him once, and he knows that he deserved it, though the thought that she might do it again make him wary enough to keep his distance for a few days before he tries anything. 

She’s in the library, when he finally tries. Three books deep into a stack that is taller than a few of the first years. Books written by Ingrid the Indisputable and the High Warlock of Birmingham. Topics ranging from Arithmancy to Advanced Transfiguration and old magic. Not dark magic, though. Just old, the stories that people tend to ignore. Draco’s read them, though. Half-read them, at least, during afternoons spent evading the potions master. He mentions something he remembers about the book she was halfway through, The Experimental Studies of Catherine De Burgh, a witch from the times of Queen Victoria. 

She almost drops the book when he speaks to her, though she later lets him sit opposite and the conversation carries on for a while before she brings up his hair, reminding him of the list and that he has to go. 

Things to do, people to see. 

His roommates are next. They don’t get it, they don’t understand the truth the way that he does and they still think that tormenting the muggleborn second years that they trap in corridors is a great sport. What a load of morons they are. Cruel, vile and everything he is sorry to have been. Everything the mark on his arm makes him out to still be. He catches them, stalking second years in the Charms corridor and, by the time he’s finished, a crowd so large has gathered that McGonagall is required to break it up. 

There is one person at Hogwarts that is truly overlooked. Draco remembers him, though, and it takes a lot for him to walk out to Hagrid’s hut one evening, and the look Hagrid gives him makes him feel ashamed. It’s one of concern, worry and confusion and when Hagrid calls him 'Malfoy', there’s no malice to it, no other meaning, as though all the connotations his name carries are forgotten. It so happens that Hagrid is knee high in a pile of shit when Draco walks out to him and somehow, in the middle of his apology, Draco joins him, gingerly holding a shovel and wondering how just one measly three-headed dog can…relieve himself so much. 

His list is almost complete after that. The pile of unopened letters at the foot of his bed is starting the topple precariously by this point, and the letters come almost every day, enquiring about the ‘extracurricular activities’ he stopped working on a long time ago, but he really cannot bring himself to care. 

Things are getting worse, outside of the thick stone walls of Hogwarts. His parents implore him, others…threaten him, and Draco can guess what has happened to the witches and wizards who are listed as ‘missing’ in the Daily Prophet. It only proves him right, though, that this is something he cannot survive. 

It urges him on, to get the bottom of his list. To tick off the last name. To square things with the last person on the list, who also happens to be the person he perhaps thinks about the most. He has spent years repressing his true feelings towards this person, years being a colossal twat, and he wants them back. Or he wants the next best thing. To right things. To tell Harry Potter how he feels. It won’t matter, if things don’t go his way, so why the fuck not?

He doesn’t even have to think about it, doesn’t have to build up his courage or spend a while skulking around, he just goes for it. Lets his feelings rise to the surface for once and admits to himself how badly he wants this. How badly he wants Harry. 

Acting on autopilot, he wanders into the Great Hall, accustomed to the stares and whispers that follow him around now, and he walks up to the Gryffindor table, seeking out the familiar head of messy black hair and clearing his throat, waiting for Harry to turn around, most likely to question him, before he pulls him up into a kiss. 

Harry kisses back too quickly for it to be something he hadn’t thought about, and Draco stops thinking for a moment. Just kisses him. Pours years of feelings into the kiss and clutches at Harry, tugging him closer. 

It’s a good kiss, the best Draco’s ever had. The realest he’s ever had. And then he pulls away, turns around and leaves, skipping out on dinner. 

It only takes a minute for Harry to jump up and follow him. 

There are more kisses, more smiles and someone who understands the futility of everything, how fragile life seems to be, and Draco is finally himself, or as close to the real him as he’ll ever be. 

He doesn’t stop thinking, though, that he won’t survive this. It’s a truth everyone knows. Everyone embraces the truth, these days, everyone at Hogwarts seems to treat each day like it’s all they have, only for most, it isn’t the truth. It isn’t the end. 

Draco knows he’s right, though. He’s caught up in the middle of it, torn between his family, between his feelings, and what he wants for himself. Really, he’s fighting on three sides though there’s only two. 

He won’t survive this war.

His arm burns and a boy kisses him and blue hair falls into his eyes. It’s a fight, a constant fight, and he wants to go back to when he was fourteen and still idolised his parents and tell himself to wake up and smell the fucking coffee.

He doesn’t survive the war. 

His blue hair stands out amongst the rubble, his body lies amongst the remains of the castle. His parents find him, as does Harry, a little too late, and no one is surprised.

**Author's Note:**

> thoughts?


End file.
